Liquid brown orbs held sparkling hazel ones in that this-is-once-in-a-lifetime gaze.  “How could we not have met earlier, T?,” Bette whispered.  “The next fifty, sixty years already seems too short.”

Tina teared-up. How did I get so lucky?  In what reality does something like this happen to someone like me? When is the other shoe going to drop?

Bette smiled lovingly, and pulled Tina’s hand to her lips. “Do you know that sometimes, I stop breathing when you enter the room?  Actually, that happens often, not just sometimes. And then my heart starts to race, too.  I think my jaw grows slack, after that, and my eyes struggle to adjust, following you as you move around the room. Then I think you sometimes start asking me about something or other, and honestly, I have no idea what I tell you in response, in those initial few minutes after you enter the room.”

“Hmm….but won’t you grow tired of me, at some point?,” Tina asked, quietly, enjoying Bette’s kisses of her fingers.

Bette smiled, “Good. Then maybe I can start breathing normally again whenever you’re near, and my heart can begin to calm down…I did tell you it has a hole, right?”   She gently let go of Tina’s hand as the massage therapist tapped her side to signal for Bette to roll on her back.

Tina smiled as she resumed facing down, and as Bette’s other hand picked up her hand again.

After a few minutes of silence, “You were right, by the way…that hair bath was phenomenal!,” Tina murmured. “We should look for a spa in New York that offers it.”

“Hmm…nothing like looking face down on a glass floor, into beautiful coral and exotic fish swimming by, while your hair is being treated like that, though.  I think I even saw a few manta rays swim by when they were massaging my scalp,” Bette responded lazily, eyes shut.

“Ahhh…,” Tina responded, as the massage therapist traced out the kinks of a major nerve by the top of her shoulder blade, “you’re right…that glass floor was amazing! All that sea life!  Does it look like that when you’re snorkeling?”

“Mmhmmm…something like it.  But you get to see other things.  Just a whole other world down there,” Bette answered.  “If you’re up to it, I can take you to one of the reefs that surround the island that you can reach just with a pair of flippers. There’s a nice one that’s easy to swim to, stunning actually: almost a 100-foot wall of coral rippling with all kinds of colorful fish.”